The Bookseller.com

5th December 2008

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Queen honours books

16.06.08 Tom Holman

Authors, librarians and independent publishers were among those receiving gongs in the Queen's Birthday Honours over the weekend.

The roll-call included a DBE for Margaret Drabble for services to literature, 28 years after she was awarded a CBE. A DBE also goes to writer and broadcaster Joan Bakewell, while prolific novelist and screenwriter Lynda la Plante and novelist and historian Marina Warner each receive a CBE. There is an MBE for Alex Wheatle and OBEs for poet Don Paterson and children's author Malorie Blackman.

Annie Eaton, fiction publisher at Random House Children's Books, said Blackman's honour was richly deserved. "She is a born storyteller who has written in many different genres, and has contributed in a major way to the cause of literacy—it's wonderful to think of how many millions of children's lives have been enriched by her books."

Five public and private sector librarians getting honours include Sue Wilkinson, librarian at HM Prison in Birmingham and chair of CILIP's Prison Libraries Group, who was named an MBE for services to reading and literacy. Wilkinson, who has launched numerous reading initiatives and groups at the prison, said she was particularly pleased to receive the honour in the National Year of Reading. "Like most prisons we work with people who haven't ever been interested in books. We try to instil in them the importance of reading—but much more importantly the pleasure of it."

Hilary Bradt, founder and now chairman of independent travel publisher Bradt Guides, received an MBE for services to tourism and charity. The company's guides encourage travellers to contribute to charities local to their destination, and Bradt said she suspected she had been nominated for the award by members of staff and other publishers. "It's obviously not just an award for me but for what we've achieved as a company."

Another MBE went to Molly Burkett, an author and founder of Grantham-based independent Barny Books. Burkett used £12,000 from the sale of film rights in one of her books to set up the company in 1980, initially as an advisory service for authors who wanted to be published. "We took on writers who had been taken for a ride elsewhere, and if we liked their books enough we published them."

Arts figures receiving honours included Peter Hewitt, former chief executive of Arts Council England, and Michael Lynch, chief executive of London's South Bank Centre, both now CBEs.

Tom Holman Books